Ive been noticing something similar recently. If somethings not working out itll be like "Ok this isnt working out, lets just switch to doing this other thing instead you explicitly said not to do".
replyFor example I wanted to get VNC working with PopOS Cosmic and itll be like ah its ok well just install sway and thatll work!
Experienced this -- was repeatedly directing CC to use Claude in Chrome extension to interact with a webpage and it was repeatedly invoking Playwright MCP instead.
replyIt’s as if it gives up, I respond keep going with original plan, you can do it champ!
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replyThey're saying just do it yourself instead of trying to herd an unpredictable animal to your bidding like an LLM.
replyYes, and over the last few weeks I have noticed that on long-context discussions Opus 4.6e does its best to encourage me to call it a day and wrap it up; repeatedly. Mother Anthropic is giving preprompts to Claude to terminate early and in
my case always prematurely.
replyI've noticed this as well. "Now you should stop X and go do Y" is a phrase I see repeated a lot. Claude seems primed to instruct me to stop using it.
replyTry Codex, it's a breath of fresh air in that regard, tries to do as much as it can.
reply> Whenever the phrase "simplest fix" appears, it's time to pull the emergency break.
replySecond! In CLAUDE.md, I have a full section NOT to ever do this, and how to ACTUALLY fix something.
This has helped enormously.
Any chance you could share those sections of your claude file? I've been using Claude a bit lately but mostly with manual changes, not got much in the way of the claude file yet and interested in how to improve it
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I switched from Cursor to Claude because the limits are so much higher but I see Anthropic playing a lot more games to limit token use
replyWhat wording do you use for this, if you don't mind? This thread is a revelation, I have sworn that I've seen it do this "wait... the simplest fix is to [use some horrible hack that disregards the spec]" much more often lately so I'm glad it's not just me.
replyHowever I'm not sure how to best prompt against that behavior without influencing it towards swinging the other way and looking for the most intentionally overengineered solutions instead...
My own experience has been that you really just have to be diligent about clearing your cache between tasks, establishing a protocol for research/planning, and for especially complicated implementations reading line-by-line what the system is thinking and interrupting the moment it seems to be going bad.
replyIf it's really far off the mark, revert back to where you originally sent the prompt and try to steer it more, if it's starting to hesitate you can usually correct it without starting over.
That is generically my experience as well. Claude half-assing work or skipping stuff because "takes too much time" is something I've been experiencing since I started using it (May 2025). Forcing it to create and review and implementation plan, and then reviewing the implementation cross-referenced with the plan almost always produces consistent results in my case.
replyMake sure to use "PRETTY PLEASE" in all caps in your `SOUL.md`. And occasionally remind it that kittens are going to die unless it cooperates. Works wonders.
replyI love how despite how cold and inhuman LLMs are, we've at least taught them to respect the lives of kittens
replyCan you paste the relevant section in your soul please?
replySure, as soon as I locate my soul.
replyWhere is that? I found "Return the simplest working solution. No over-engineering." which sounds more like the simplest fix.
replyI need to add another agent that watches the first, and pulls the plug whenever it detects "Wait, I see the problem now..."
replyYeah it’s so frustrating to have to constantly ask for the best solution, not the easiest / quickest / less disruptive.
replyI have in Claude md that it’s a greenfield project, only present complete holistic solutions not fast patches, etc. but still I have to watch its output.
Time's up and money is tight. The downgrade was bound to happen.
replyI think in general we need to be highly critical of anything LLMs tell us.
replyClaude code shows: OAuth error: timeout of 15000ms exceeded
replyMaybe a local or intermittent issue? Working for me.
replySeems solved now indeed.
replyIt's a bit insane that they can't figure out a cryptographic way for the delivery of the Claude Code Token, what's the point of going online to validate the OAuth AFTER being issued the code, can't they use signatures?
reply”I can’t make this api work for my client. I have deleted all the files in the (reference) server source code, and replaced it with a python version”
replyRepeatedly, too. Had to make the server reference sources read-only as I got tired of having to copy them over repeatedly
Haha yeah. I once asked it to make a field in an API response nullable, and to gracefully handle cases where that might be an issue (it was really easy, I was just lazy and could have done it myself, but I thought it was the perfect task for my AI idiot intern to handle). Sure, it said. Then it was bored of the task and just deleted the field altogether.
replyThat helps explain why my sessions signed themselves out and won't log back in.
replyI just experienced this some time ago and could not sign in still.
replyTheir status page shows everything is okay.
How complex are we talking? I one shotted a game boy emulator in <6 minutes today
replyThere are countless reference examples online, that's just a slower, buggier, and more expensive git clone.
replyYep. If you ask Claude to create a drop-in replacement for an open-source project that passes 100% of the test suite of the project, it will basically plagiarize the project wholesale, even if you changed some of the requirements.
replytry one shotting something actually original and see how it goes
replyi keep getting nonsense
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replyCertain phrases invoke an over-response trying to course correct which makes it worse because it's inclined to double down on the wrong path it's already on.
replyThe cope is hard. Just at this point admit that the LLM tech is doomed and sucks.
replyBut it was clearly really food before the regression, the original link (analysis) says as much.
replyJust because some people try to use a hammer as a screwdriver it doesn't follow that the hammer sucks.
replyhow is it "doomed"?
replyThe cost far outweighs the profits.
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